FOI Failure Blamed On E-Mail ‘Black Hole Syndrome’

Published 7th November 2005

Over half of public sector professionals cite poor e-mail storage as a major hindrance to FOI compliance...

The public sector is failing to comply with the FOI act due to a severe issue of e-mail management. A survey carried out by Kinomi has revealed that 52 per cent of public sector professionals believe undisciplined e-mail storage is to blame.

The research by the e-mail management specialist also revealed that almost two thirds of respondents think improved e-mail archiving would make it easier to deliver on the FOI initiative. This act requires organisations to respond to information requests within 20 days.

The study, undertaken at the public sector IT conference SOCITM, investigated e-mail practices in the public sector and how these impact on overall information management.

According to Kinomi, these results suggest that the public sector is yet to develop clear guidelines and policy for e-mail management. In addition to posing serious concerns regarding compliance, it’s likely that public sector professionals are wasting hours every day searching for old e-mails, preventing them from carrying out their duties and seriously impacting on productivity.

“Considering that 90 per cent of transactions are now conducted via e-mail, this poses massive potential difficulties to those whose inbox suffers from ‘black hole syndrome’,” said Andy Black, CEO at Kinomi. “In addition to improving efficiency, the public sector is also faced with strict compliance requirements regarding how e-mails are stored and retrieved, with the Freedom of Information Act adding a whole new dimension to data management. This research highlights the extent of the problem.”

According to Black, many organisations are yet to develop efficient policies to deal with this issue, in spite of the relevant software being available. He added: “Public sector organisations have no excuse for failing to address the issue given that tools are now available to help organisations manage e-mail which can automatically extract key information and build a searchable knowledge base.”






About Kinomi http://www.kinomi.com
Kinomi is a UK-based enterprise software product company, founded by Stephen Hebditch, ex co-founder of Mediasurface. The company was founded in January 2003, and already at eight staff, brings together some of the UK’s most experienced sales, content management, marketing and engineering expertise.